


Carry On Like Normal

by satiredichotomy



Series: You Live, You Learn [4]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Episode: s01e08 Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum, M/M, filling in the gaps in Paul's head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-08 12:28:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12864540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satiredichotomy/pseuds/satiredichotomy
Summary: He's doing the right thing.  He keeps telling himself that.





	Carry On Like Normal

**Author's Note:**

> Dialogue borrowed from the scene. Just a little snippet to see what was going on in Stamets' head.

Cadet Tilly walks in and sits herself down opposite Lieutenant Stamets.

Stamets hopes that if he ignores her long enough, she’ll take the hint and leave. No such luck.

“What is going on with you?” she asks.

And that is why he doesn’t really like her. Cadets should know better when talking to a superior officer. Tilly needs to stop pushing boundaries. “Excuse me?” Paul replies.

“At first, the Tardigrade DNA booster seemed like a good thing. But now you're back to your old pernickety, grumpy self. So, what's the deal?” Tilly persists.

He takes the greatest of care not to let his face reveal anything, but he can feel his hands sweating. He’d hoped that his little episode after the jump would go unnoticed, but Cadet Tilly was nothing if not observant. It was one of the reasons that he didn’t mind working with her. Stamets did not want to go down that path. “Nothing. You're dismissed, Cadet.”

She matches his stare and doesn’t move a muscle. Paul waits as long as he can but he can feel the sweat pooling in his palms. What if Hugh walks in the door? What if someone walks in and joins them at their table? He needs this conversation over with. And he can’t lie, because Tilly’s there for every damned jump.

“Okay, I'll admit that something has been happening to me. One minute, I know where I am, who you are, what I'm doing, and then, all of a sudden, what I know changes. It gets jumbled,” Paul explains.

Tilly nods. “Have you told Dr. Culber about this?”

“That would put Hugh in an impossible position. As a medical officer, it would be his duty to report the effects of my genetic manipulation. I'd be sent to a Federation lab to be poked and prodded. On the other hand, if he doesn't tell and Starfleet finds out, his career would be ruined. Either way, I hurt him.”

Oddly enough, it doesn’t hurt Paul as much as he thought it would to say it out loud. He would never have thought that he could force those words out in a public forum, but no one’s paying attention except for the Cadet. He feels better for saying it out loud.

“Um, okay,” Tilly replies. She gets it, he notes with relief. “We'll monitor these episodes. Hopefully, they'll pass, right? You don't seem reassured. Usually I'm good at that. That's kind of my thing.”

He can’t help but smile at that. He’s not reassured in the least – he has an inkling that all the monitoring in the world won’t help him now – but he feels more confident that he’s doing the right thing. Tilly hadn’t even tried to suggest that he tell Hugh about his situation once he’d explained why he couldn’t.

During the time loops, he’d told Hugh the truth and promised to tell him again once they’d rejoined the timestream. That was another lie. He did sit Hugh down for a talk. He confronted him about not trusting him, and Hugh agreed that he would do better. It was easier to have the conversation in the face of a million time loops, during none of which he had Hugh’s support. Hugh clearly felt guilty about it, and somehow they went from talking to kissing to sex, and there wasn’t the right moment for Paul to bring up the side effects.

It feels like a lead weight on his shoulders. Every morning, he wakes up, looks at Hugh in the mirror while they brush their teeth, and wants to confess. And every day, he holds his tongue and carries on like normal.

Somewhere, hidden in a deep dark corner of his brain, is the memory of that first meeting with Hugh on Alpha Centauri. They were bound by honesty, he’d told Burnham in one of the time loops. It’s a binding that he unravels with every lie he tells.

He isn’t naïve enough to think that he’ll get away with it forever, but Paul feels like he’s been living on borrowed time since the day the Tardigrade DNA entered his body. But until something changes, he has no choice but to keep on protecting Hugh with every bone in his body.


End file.
